Switches was having a marvelous day. One could say that ever since he had stumbled upon the dungeon for the second time, he’d been having nothing but a series of fortunate events, one after the other. The initial meeting might have been slightly on the rough side. The gnome had originally thought that he’d be joining the avatar’s group on their way back to Rosewind. The explosion had been somewhat uncalled for, but as the saying went, “every explosion is the start of a new discovery.”

As it turned out, getting away from the dreaded swamp was just the change of perspective a gnome needed to get the creative juices flowing. And flow they did. There was one thing that Switches knew from past experience—no matter the circumstances, every interaction between a dungeon and a gnome was an audition. In the case of the gnome’s previous dungeon, the audition had gone rather poorly. When Switches had gone there, seeking to pay off his accumulated debt and make a few personal discoveries in the process, Switches had been naïve enough to think that blueprints would be enough to dazzle him into a high position. Ultimately, the dungeon had hired him, in a manner of speaking, but neither the position nor the conditions were anything as advertised. Thus, the first thing that had come to mind after the encounter with Theo, was that he had to try harder and prove his worth to the dungeon.

A plan of action had quickly been defined, composed of three easily achievable points: find the dungeon’s main body, get there, and do so in a way that presented Switches’ skills in the best light possible. Since it was safe to say that the gnome had displayed his ability to make goblin gliders, mechanized suits of armor, and giant destructive dirigibles, something else had to be shown.

The Eureka moment had come moments later in the form of a crow covered in swamp muck. Looking at the creature—before eating it—Switches barely recognized it as a crow. Initially, he thought it an exotic species of winged swamp-rat or something. Then it dawned on him. For a dungeon extravagant enough to hide in a fully inhabited town, disguise was the greatest asset an employee would have. And so, the construction of disguises began.

There was no way Switches could say that the audition had been easy. Theodor clearly had very high standards and enough moral fiber not to allow exceptions, even when it came to friends. Half the other dungeons would have welcomed Switches on the first attempt, or possibly the second, but Theodor hadn’t been one for shortcuts, always pushing Switches to do better.

After the failure of the peddler, knight, and farmer outfits, it was clear that nothing less than a masterpiece would do, and so one was made. Putting all his ingenuity and skills into one creation, Switches had created a mechanical carriage, complete with a set of mechanical horses.

In his mind, the gnome was certain that this would earn him the job. As it turned out, it had only earned him a lengthier interview. Some good points had been made, valuable feedback offered, at the end of which the dungeon had politely told Switches that he still didn’t meet the criteria for hiring.

At that point, most gnomes would have been discouraged, though not Switches. He had seen the refusal as what it was: a desire for perfection. The notion had been so simple that Switches had almost missed it. Theodor wasn’t one to be swayed with fancy gadgets or devices. What the dungeon really wanted was someone who could think on their feet, someone who could pick up subtle hints, quickly identify problems, then act on them in a focused way without getting bogged down with overcomplicated solutions. And sure enough, after the next interview, the gnome was hired.

“Switches!” a child yelled from outside. “Dad’s scythe broke again. Can you make a new one?”

“No problem!” the gnome shouted back, already rushing to a stack of metal chunks. “Did you tell him I can make him a set of armor that will automatically cut hay for him?”

“Yeah,” the child replied from outside. “He said he needs the practice.”

Given that the person in question had broken several metal alloy scythes of increasing strength, he didn’t sound like someone who needed practice. Even so, he insisted on doing things the “natural way.” That didn’t bother Switches in the least. The place that the dungeon had designated to be his workshop was a perfect start. In his mind, the gnome was convinced he had been given a trial period. Theodor probably wanted to see how he’d manage in modest conditions near a smaller inhabited area. Only after the trial period was over would a real lab be constructed within Rosewind itself.

While the gnome selected several sheets of alloy to slam together in his newly created aether hammer-press, a figure emerged from the shadows in the workshop.

“Gnome,” a female voice whispered as the figure drew a knife from her dress. “I want ten of this one.”

“Oh, so you chose that sample?” The gnome glanced over his shoulder briefly, while still focusing on the head of the metal scythe he was supposed to make. “Is that just for you?”

“My sister’s still undecided.” The woman placed the knife on a nearby workbench. Her delicate features contrasted both with the simple village outfit she was wearing almost as much as it contrasted with the weapon.

“No problem. Just tell her to tell me when she makes her choice.”

“I will.” The woman stepped back into the shadows. “Your payment has already been taken care of,” she added. “I’ve spread parchments about your shop throughout the entire town.”

“Really?” Switches’ ears perked up. This was ever better than expected! This way, there wouldn’t be anyone who didn’t know about the workshop. Naturally, Theo was the main and only target. What remained of greatest importance was for the dungeon to acknowledge the gnome’s problem-solving skills and—

The massive door of the workshop opened with a slam. Given that it was five feet of solid metal, that was a rather impressive feat.

“Switches!” Theo shouted, as a floating eyeball darted inside. “What’s all this!”

The gnome turned around, ready to shower his future employer in praise and thanks, but never got a chance.

“Cmyk!” the eyeball yelled, preventing any words from emerging from Switches’ mouth. “Show it!”

The rather annoyed minion took a few steps in, reluctantly making its way up to the eyeball, then took out a scroll from his belt and unrolled it. In doing so, though, he inadvertently brushed against the eyeball, causing it to pop into nothingness.

The gnome winced, then put on its goggle-glasses and took a closer look.

“Switches’ Scientific Workshop,” the small creature read. “It has a rather nice ring to it when you say it out loud.” He beamed.

“Nice ring, my ass!” Another eyeball floated in as the dungeon reverted to curses from his previous life. “What braindead reason did you have for flooding town with those? I had to spend a stack of hay to buy a workshop permit.”

“You bought me a workshop permit?” Switches’ eyes widened. Teardrops of joy attempted to trickle down, but were blocked by the goggles, filling up a small portion of the space. “I’m speechless.”

According to Euclid’s fifth postulate, parallel lines couldn’t ever come into contact with one another. In this case, two lines of thought that had nothing in common did so quite well. Seeing the gnome’s tears, Theo was convinced that the creature had finally taken the hint and was sorry for the mess up. On the other hand, Switches found the act of the dungeon buying a workshop license as proof that his efforts had been noticed. After all, why else would a dungeon waste time and effort on such a document?

For several seconds, both of them—along with a marginally annoyed Cmyk—remained silent and motionless, looking at each other.

YOU FEEL DEVASTATING HUNGER!

The annoying notification quickly caused Theo to break the silence.

“Also, do you have any idea where you are?” he asked.

“In my works— I mean, your workshop?” Switches made a tentative guess.

“You turned the remains of a goblin carrier into your workshop?!”

The inside of the airship had nothing in common with what Theo remembered. Many of the walls were gone, creating one vast space. Of course, that had been cluttered with lots of heavy equipment, tool racks, piles of questionable devices, and a blackboard ten times the gnome’s size.

“Yes, and I’m very thankful. Just a few minor changes here and there and look at this place now.”

“Do you have any idea what would happen if…” The eyeball floated closer. “If the people figure out who you are?” it whispered.

“Oh, don’t worry. They’ve completely forgotten about it.” Switches grinned, then went back to carrying the sheets of metal to the hammer-press. “Lovely people, once I got to know them. A lot more cheerful than when they worked in the Mandrake mines.”

“I wonder why…” Theo grumbled.

“They have very high standards, mind you. I guess that’s why you sent me here. First, I prove I could make useful tools for them, then—”

“Hold on!” Half of the buildings in Rosewind spontaneously got a few degrees colder, as if a mysterious draft had spontaneously appeared then disappeared without a trace. “You talked to some of the villagers?”

“Pfft! Of course not,” Switches said with pride.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

The answer made the dungeon let out a sigh of relief.

“I personally spoke to all of them! Babies included!”

The gnome’s clarification, on the other hand, made Theo feel a lot worse.

“How would I attract customers otherwise?”

There were a thousand things that Theo wanted to do to the gnome right now. Unfortunately, right now was possibly the only time he had to refrain from doing so. Gritting all his doors and windows, the dungeon took a deep breath, then moved the floating eyeball a bit closer.

“The mechanical golem,” Theo continued. “The one you used to fight me back when you were… Lord M.”

“Yeees?” Switches was unsure where this was going, so in good gnome tradition decided to agree.

“Can you make one?”

“Ah. No.”

“Wait, what?”

“You need demon lord hearts for those, and I don’t have any. Also, between you and me, it might be a bad idea. I’m not saying that I’ll get obsessed a second time, but why tempt fate?”

“You need… What about another power source? I can—” Theo quickly stopped. He could feel Spok’s warning gaze on the inside of his walls. With all the energy his avatar was consuming, talk of giving out more would only be met with further sarcasm. “—buy something else, potentially.”

“I can make a smaller one from a few magic trinkets.” The gnome scratched his ear. “Won’t be anything as massive, though. And might need some planning. When do you need it?”

“Yesterday,” the eyeball said just as Cmyk rolled up the scroll again in deliberately clumsy fashion, popping the eyeball.

Meanwhile, the fight in the cursed ballroom continued in full swing.

Former thieves and adventurers moved about like deadly marionettes, slashing, thrusting, and charging at everything in sight. The blood spider had used up a fraction of its blood to allow weapons to form in the hands of its living puppets, suddenly making them a lot more lethal. As for the marquis and his wife—they had gently floated up in the air, literally displaying that such rude antics were beneath them.

“Protect the kids,” the avatar said as he encased a rather plump former adventurer with a double-sided blood ax.

“Right.” Liandra slammed the broadside of her double sword through the latest wave of attackers, swatting them like flies. They’d have some bruises and broken bones once they regained consciousness, but they would definitely be alive. “Take care of yourself.” She leaped above a large portion of the crowd, landing near the spot where Avid, Amelia, and Ulf stood back-to-back, fending off all attacks.

“I must say, you’re not terrible, Baron,” the marquis said from above. “Maybe if you had joined us a few weeks earlier, you would have stood a chance.”

Octavian let out a griffin screech, flying through the ballroom, fangs extended forward. Before the creature could halve the distance, threads of red shot out from the blood spider, creating a massive spider web. The bird flapped its wings in an attempt to change course. Sadly, it was too late, and the majestic beast slammed right into the sticky web, becoming trapped and far less majestic.

“Pesky, pesky.” The marquis tutted at the griffin. “Magnificence is no excuse for poor behavior.”

A new circle of ice formed round the avatar, imprisoning six more unfortunate souls. Swinging his sword, the avatar struck one of the minuscule threads going from a man’s mask all the way up to the blood spider. Same as in all previous times, the resistance was significant, but now that both sides of the threads were firmly fixed in place, the blade managed to eventually slice through.

There was a loud snap, at which point one of the ruby chandeliers trembled.

Without hesitation, Theo cast a fireball, wrapped it in an aether bubble, and sent it flying in that direction. An explosion immediately followed, engulfing the chandelier in flames.

Insect-like screeches rose slightly above the sounds of fighting as each of the chandelier’s rubies scampered off, fleeing to another spot on the ceiling.

“Spok.” The dungeon shifted his focus to his main body. “What exactly is a blood spider?”

“Are you sure it’s just a blood spider, sir?” the spirit guardian asked with a note of reproach.

“How many blood spiders are there?” Theo snapped at her.

“Twenty-seven as of my creation,” Spok replied with an internal sigh. “Assuming you’ve encountered the basic type, a blood spider is a hive-mind swarm of insects made entirely out of the blood of their victims. While annoying and difficult to get rid of, especially in large structures, they are virtually harmless.”

In the ballroom, a pair of large adventurers stood next to each other, creating a stepladder with their hands, which a dozen others used to jump off and propel themselves through the air to where Theo’s trio were desperately defending themselves. The flying attackers were consistently swatted by Liandra, although as the numbers increased even she was having trouble.

“They don’t appear harmless…”

“Unless you’re a human and covered in them, you should be fine, sir,” Spok insisted. “The poets describe them as a ‘carpet of ladybirds’ or ‘red cockroaches’ depending on the author’s mood.”

“Is it normal for them to be crawling on ceilings?” the dungeon asked, adding as much sarcasm as he could.

“Any red cockroach can crawl on ceilings, sir,” the spirit guide added with a note of surprise.

The more Theo thought about it, the more he felt sick. Dungeon or not, he had no intention of allowing such creepies within his rooms and corridors, or even on them, for that matter. The common Rosewind rats and insects were bad enough.

“So, the entire thing is a swarm?” he asked as cracks formed on the ice he had created. Apparently, just because they had been frozen solid didn’t mean that the possessed adventurers were in no condition to fight. Throughout the ballroom, even those with broken limbs rose back up and quickly returned to the fight. “Why is it called a spider, then?”

“Because that’s the entity’s first appearance,” Spok explained. “They start as a small insect on the finger of a person, then grow larger and quickly multiply by sucking more and more of the victim’s blood until they turn into a small swarm. In the case of several victims, the swarm could get slightly larger.”

Thinking of all the ruby chandeliers so far, that was a bit of an understatement. Between all the people in the ballroom and the skeletons that they had to fight through to get here, there had to be hundreds. No wonder that every ceiling had multiple massive chandeliers made of rubies.

A spear of blood formed in the hand of a petite semi-frozen woman, only for her to be refrozen solid by one of Theo’s ice spells.

“Quite determined, aren’t they?” Lady Raffel turned to her husband. “We simply must keep them.”

“Yes, dear. We definitely shall. I’ve long wanted to add a hero to our collection and now we have two. One of them’s a noble, to boot.” He glanced down at Theo’s avatar. “Still hanging in there, Baron?” he asked in jest.

“Why don’t you get down here and find out?” The avatar launched a series of ice swords in the direction of the frozen pair. Same as with the griffin, a web of blood threads appeared out of nowhere, entangling the shards of ice mid-air.

“Such common things are beneath us.” The marquis waved a hand in disgust. “And despite your splendid performance, you, sir, are merely a baron.”

There was no reason for the comment to have upset Theo. It was absolutely groundless, plus as a dungeon, Theo had no reason to feel insulted. His main body was many times larger than the entire pitiful estate, not to mention that he was on a first name basis with a deity, had saved the world once, and had been a hair’s width away from turning out to be the elves’ chosen savior. Thus, he was not in the least affected by the base insult hired at him. At the same time, he felt a completely irrational and unconnected desire to crush both of the floating snobs.

“Maybe if you were a count, we’d recon—”

A combination of fire and ice flew up towards the ceiling. A layer of explosions erupted, scattering the “rubies” off all chandeliers. Most of them scurried along the ceiling in an attempt to find somewhere safe. Others dropped to the floor, where they splatted like drops of blood. Simultaneously, ice shards flew straight at the marquis.

This time, no crimson web appeared, forcing the snob to use his own blood to create a shield with which to protect himself. And that wasn’t all. Many of the existing strands snapped, causing several of the ballroom puppets to collapse. The web holding Octavian weakened, allowing the creature to free himself.

Letting out an angry screech, the bird grabbed a couple of unfortunate adventurers and tossed them at the opposing wall.

“Oh, grow up!” the avatar said, annoyed. “A little fire never hurt anyone.”

“Quite clever.” The marquis’ tone changed. “You figured out that the blood spider was protecting us, so you directed your attacks towards it, so it no longer could.”

That wasn’t in the least what the dungeon had in mind. The outburst was merely him making a point. Personally, he had hoped that an intense attack such as this would have been able to scorch and skewer the two nobles. On reflection, maybe it was better that it didn’t. The people were nothing more than puppets for the monocle and ruby ring.

Ruby ring? A thought suddenly hit the dungeon.

“Spok, you said that the blood spider starts as a single insect,” he said back in his main body. “Any chance there could be two of them?”

“Two blood spiders in the same building?” It took some effort for the spirit guide not to roll her eyes. “That is highly unlikely, sir.”

“And I suspect you’ll tell me that it’s impossible for a person to be cursed into an item and command a blood spider?”

The question contained the usual mix of ignorance and absurdity that Spok had come to expect, yet somewhere deep in her very being, she felt a grain of concern.

“Would you mind clarifying, sir?” she asked. “What exactly did you mean by having a person cursed into an item?”

“The ring is the woman wearing the ring, while the woman is someone else entirely.”

Blood stilettos emerged from the marquis’ body, then flew down at the avatar. Not knowing their properties, Theo cast an ice shield, then surrounded himself with an indestructible aether sphere. The stilettos shattered through the ice as if it were made of sugar, then bounced off the impenetrable aether surface, scattering all over the ballroom’s walls.

“A ring is a woman that’s wearing the ring?” Spok repeated.

“Look, it’s very simple.” The dungeon was getting more and more annoyed. “There’s a woman who refers to herself as Lady Raffel. But she’s not. She’s actually some random adventurer. The ring she’s wearing is actually Lady Raffel.”

An explanation of that nature would have confused a lot of people, though not the spirit guide. Unfortunately, she would have felt a lot better if it had.

“Are you absolutely certain, sir?” she asked.

“Of course I am!” Theo said while launching a series of ice daggers at the marquis. This time, he also put in the effort to bless the tip of each one. “I used arcane identify.”

This time it was the icicles’ turn to shatter the blood shield the marquis was holding. Several of them even nicked the man’s body. The wounds didn’t seem particularly serious, yet a multitude of red threads quickly emerged, wrapping around them like crimson bandages.

“And you said there were two of them, sir?” Back in Rosewind, Spok continued.

“Yes, I’m fighting them now, along with a whole bunch of masked puppets that—”

“Masked?”

“Spok, stop interrupting me every second. Yes, there are cursed adventurers with masks, snobbish items that believe they are nobility, and a blood spider that’s spread along the ceilings of a ballroom and several more corridors, at least.”

“I’d suggest that you get your avatar out of there immediately, sir.”

“A bit too late for that.” Even if the dungeons’ avatar wasn’t engaged with a pair of annoying opponents, it didn’t look like the junior adventurers would be able to escape the mansion.

Even with Liandra’s heavy assistance, the trio remained surrounded from everywhere and there was no indication that their attackers were slowing down, regardless of the damage inflicted on them. It didn’t help that everyone on Theo’s team was doing their best to do as little actual damage to the cursed people as possible.

“You’re not just fighting a blood spider,” Spok clarified. “You’re facing a pet.”

“How’s that worse?”

“Pets belong to children, and children are only created when an abomination fully corrupts a person with itself.”